Can a student pilot move an aircraft on the ramp?

Skip Miller said:
Which means for the belt and suspenders approach, get your CFI to give you a taxi lesson (he does that every time you fly, from exiting the runway to the tie down - doesnt he?) and then put a short endorsement in your logbook: "I have given Mr X taxi lessons in this aircraft on the grounds of Kyyy and he is competent to reposition this aircraft on this airport solo, for the purpose of refueling and returning to the tie down. Signed xxx CFI ######". That should keep everyone happy.

-Skip
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No such endorsement exists in AC61-65H, so no on this one. Flight instructors don't just make up endorsements on their own.

Bell206 said:
Depends. If the the airport gets any type of FAA funding there is usually a clause in the funding docs they must adopt portions of the Part 139 requirements which normally require some sort of airport ops manual. Regardless its up to the airport who can ground taxi an aircraft, not the FAA.
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Nope on this as well. Part 139 only applies to airports with scheduled air carrier service of more than 9 seats, and unscheduled air carrier service (aka charter) of more than 30 seats. No FAA Grant Assurance requires airports to comply with any portion of Part 139. If it did, nearly every public airport in the country would have to comply. The only part that is correct is the airport may have local codes that could impose such restrictions, but that can vary a lot.
 
I just checked my policy when I was renting my aircraft and it makes no mention of student pilots. I was covered no matter what they were doing. I have essentially the same policy now and added a student-pilot nephew as a named insured. Both of us are covered no matter what we are doing. There were no additional restrictions on the policy—just an increase in the premium.

I did have a policy at one time that limited coverage if one instructor injured another instructor on the ground, so I guess they can put odd restrictions in the policy but I’ve don’t remember having one that restricted student pilots.
 
I have never heard of the FAA trying to stop any student from taxiing to the gas pump, but then again everywhere I can think of has a fuel truck to fill planes especially if it is a flight school. In the long run it is going to be cheaper to operate one fuel truck instead of having to start every plane to get fuel. A student is going to learn how to taxi right away, first lesson or two, though putting your wing next to a fuel pump might require a little extra care.

I hope the CFI is not telling the student not to taxi just so the CFI can be in the plane with him thereby running up the instructor billing. Its possible. The schools I am most familiar with top their planes off in the evening from the truck to be ready to go the next morning.
 
So just got off the phone with my insurance broker. I asked him to clarify "direct supervision". He said the insurance company doesn't care what the FAA says. They want a "sign off" of some sort for every single solo. The could be a text or an email wouldn't have to be at the airport but you want proof that the CFI has looked at the conditions for that flight and knows you are flying.
 
DFH65 said:
So just got off the phone with my insurance broker. I asked him to clarify "direct supervision". He said the insurance company doesn't care what the FAA says. They want a "sign off" of some sort for every single solo. The could be a text or an email wouldn't have to be at the airport but you want proof that the CFI has looked at the conditions for that flight and knows you are flying.
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"flight" "flying" doesn't seem relevant
 
DFH65 said:
So just got off the phone with my insurance broker. I asked him to clarify "direct supervision". He said the insurance company doesn't care what the FAA says. They want a "sign off" of some sort for every single solo. The could be a text or an email wouldn't have to be at the airport but you want proof that the CFI has looked at the conditions for that flight and knows you are flying.
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What insurance company/broker is this so I can recommend people to NOT use them?
 
EdFred said:
What insurance company/broker is this so I can recommend people to NOT use them?
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The direct supervision clause is pretty standard from what I could find online. Were you expecting something different?
 
DFH65 said:
The direct supervision clause is pretty standard from what I could find online. Were you expecting something different?
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Yeah something that doesn't say that, like every owned-student policy I've seen my students have.
 
Salty said:
But it's ok for the student to fly 50 miles away and taxi at an airport without the CFI present? That doesn't sound like "direct" supervision to me.

Makes no sense.
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If the CFI was present to release the student for the flight, the insurance will cover the claim. If the student arrives at the airport unsupervised by a CFI, jumps in the plane and moves it under power, the insurance will deny any claim.
If the CFI has insurance and is sued, the CFIs policy will also deny any claim for unsupervised student operation of the aircraft.
 
When I learned to fly in 1991, after a period of supervised solos my instructor signed me off for unsupervised solos to two nearby airports. Is that no longer an option?
 
Palmpilot said:
When I learned to fly in 1991, after a period of supervised solos my instructor signed me off for unsupervised solos to two nearby airports. Is that no longer an option?
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This is where the broker said there is the FAA and there is the insurance company....
 
Palmpilot said:
When I learned to fly in 1991, after a period of supervised solos my instructor signed me off for unsupervised solos to two nearby airports. Is that no longer an option?
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I could go any where I wanted, within about 50 miles, with weather minimum restrictions (was like 5,000 ceilings and 8 miles vis) when ever I wanted. I flew quite a bit solo before I got my license. 1988


Edit, no bravo, forgot what they called it back then, no grass, no shorter than 3,000 feet. That was pretty much it, oh, and day time only.
 
Ravioli said:
I can understand OPs position. My LAST flight with a certain CFII went something like this.

I flew MY Cardinal Airport A -> Airport B.
Picked up the CFII at B and went out for a lovely morning of hood work, including approaches to Airport C.
Couple hours later I said, "Let's do this one full stop so I can get cheap gas, then I'll drop you back at B."

During the fuel stop, she went to the ladies room (I presume) and spoke to her husband on the mobile phone. Next word I heard from her was in response to my question, "Ready to go?" and she said "Yup."

She billed me for the fuel stop time!$!%@#@

I said, "If you charge me for that time this will be my last lesson." And it was.

Sure, it was like $30. But that $30 negated the fuel savings at C.
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Does your employer pay you when you take a break? Quit being a cheap ass. You desire to save on gas doesn’t mean someone else’s time is free. She probably called her husband to explain how she was going to be late because her cheap student made an unnecessary stop to save $10 on gas.
 
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midwestpa24 said:
No such endorsement exists in AC61-65H, so no on this one. Flight instructors don't just make up endorsements on their own.



Nope on this as well. Part 139 only applies to airports with scheduled air carrier service of more than 9 seats, and unscheduled air carrier service (aka charter) of more than 30 seats. No FAA Grant Assurance requires airports to comply with any portion of Part 139. If it did, nearly every public airport in the country would have to comply. The only part that is correct is the airport may have local codes that could impose such restrictions, but that can vary a lot.
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There are endorsements that are required, as with most regs those are minimums. CFIs can endorse any thing they want.

As an example, the regs require a pre solo test. That doesn’t mean the CFI cannot endorse the passed other tests such a a pre XC test, emergency procedures, stage exams, ect.

Some insurance policies specifically require the CFI endorse the private pilot has completed the minimum hours training required for the make and model and the pilot is approved to operate the aircraft solo.
 
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EdFred said:
What insurance company/broker is this so I can recommend people to NOT use them?
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There are probably a few variations. This one is from a nonprofit flying club policy. It's about 4 years old. It doesn't do anything special - direct supervision for dual flights, but only the appropriate endorsements for solo flights. But things could have changed.

any pilot maintaining a student pilot certificate while under the direct supervision of an appropriately certificated flight instructor for all dual flight instruction and prior to solo flight has received the instructor's appropriate written endorsement(s) of the student's certificate and log book for solo flight in an aircraft of the same make and model being flown.​
 
How do you get dual instruction without being under the direct supervision of an appropriately certificated flight instructor? That's sort of redundant.
 
midwestpa24 said:
No FAA Grant Assurance requires airports to comply with any portion of Part 139.
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FWIW: at 2 separate GA airports (zero 139 airport conditions) I used to visit regularly they were required to adopt a Part 139 style airport operations manual as part of their grants/bonds via the FAA. As I didn't care to follow some of their new ops requirements, I quit providing mx services there. I can only go by what the airports managers said and showed me, but both (in different states) said the changes were required by the feds.
 
flyingron said:
How do you get dual instruction without being under the direct supervision of an appropriately certificated flight instructor? That's sort of redundant.
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I thought so too but it seemed common enough there might have been this case when...?

BTW, I also checked with a broker I deal with fairly regularly. She hasn't come across a student endorsement requiring a
DFH65 said:
"sign off" of some sort for every single solo.
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OTOH, I have seen that in flight school rules for their students.
 
Salty said:
Technically you need to contact ground, not tower, even though ground is probably in the tower. Just for a student that might not realize that.
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And at smaller GA airports probably 90% of the time the exact same guy.
 
Kritchlow said:
And at smaller GA airports probably 90% of the time the exact same guy.
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Yeah, but last thing a student needs is the confusion of talking on the wrong freq.
 
Salty said:
Yeah, but last thing a student needs is the confusion of talking on the wrong freq.
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And probably 80% of the time they’ll be on the proper freq. if not, they’ll let him know.
 
DFH65 said:
This is where the broker said there is the FAA and there is the insurance company....
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The club this was at has always been a stickler for such matters, so I would be very surprised if my club-approved instructor had been doing anything contrary to the club's insurance policy.
 
midlifeflyer said:
I thought so too but it seemed common enough there might have been this case when...?

BTW, I also checked with a broker I deal with fairly regularly. She hasn't come across a student endorsement requiring a


OTOH, I have seen that in flight school rules for their students.
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I haven’t seen that in any of my Cherokee policies, but when I bought my C182 in 2000, that was one of the conditions for both my brother and me. Maybe it has something to do with the complexity of the aircraft.
 
JScarry said:
I haven’t seen that in any of my Cherokee policies, but when I bought my C182 in 2000, that was one of the conditions for both my brother and me. Maybe it has something to do with the complexity of the aircraft.
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Might be. Or it might be the particular underwriting company. The one thing we know about aviation policies is that they are not uniform. The broker I spoke with hasn't seen it but that may be the stable of companies being dealt with. I know a student pilot with a Mooney. I'll see if I can check the policy.
 
Usually, the insurers don't push any sort of policy down. What they do is review the operator's existing policies and say "OK, we'll cover that." Occassionally, they'll suggest a change. We had one insurer try to get us to add "public paved airports only" but we settled for just "airports." If you seem some particularly arcane rule, it's almost certain that some guy at the operator thought it was a good idea and it was now codified by having been "approved" by the insurer and the insurer take the heat for it.
 
Bell206 said:
FWIW: at 2 separate GA airports (zero 139 airport conditions) I used to visit regularly they were required to adopt a Part 139 style airport operations manual as part of their grants/bonds via the FAA. As I didn't care to follow some of their new ops requirements, I quit providing mx services there. I can only go by what the airports managers said and showed me, but both (in different states) said the changes were required by the feds.
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As you stated maintenance, I'm guessing you are talking about the airport establishing Minimum Standards for Commercial Operations, which is strongly encouraged by the FAA through Grant Assurances. Part 139 has nothing to do with that. Further more the grant assurances are standard for all airports. The FAA does not pick and choose which airports have which ones.

Here is a link to the FAA Grant Assurances. You will note zero references in the document to Part 139. As I stated before, Part 139 only applies to airports with scheduled air carrier service of more than 9 seats, and unscheduled air carrier service (aka charter) of more than 30 seats.
 
midwestpa24 said:
I'm guessing you are talking about the airport establishing Minimum Standards for Commercial Operations,
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Don't know as it was 20 years ago or so. But I recall the managers referencing Part 139 and their changes had to do with access to aircraft movement areas??
 
Bell206 said:
Don't know as it was 20 years ago or so. But I recall the managers referencing Part 139 and their changes had to do with access to aircraft movement areas??
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It is possible that although generally viewed as a GA airport, that the airport was indeed a certificated Part 139 airport due to unscheduled charters of large aircraft. For what its worth, here is a list of the currently certificated airports.
 
midwestpa24 said:
that the airport was indeed a certificated Part 139 airport due to unscheduled charters of large aircraft
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As I had stated above it wasn't. Which was the gist of my conversation with the managers. All the commercial traffic went to 139 airports several miles away and was one of the reasons my customers moved to these smaller GA airports. With the influx of more aircraft landing at these smaller airports they applied for FAA monies to improve basic services. Thankfully, with the increased market each airport had an AP/IA eventually take up residence which helped our mutual decision not to work on my customers aircraft any more.
 
flyingron said:
Usually, the insurers don't push any sort of policy down. What they do is review the operator's existing policies and say "OK, we'll cover that." Occassionally, they'll suggest a change. We had one insurer try to get us to add "public paved airports only" but we settled for just "airports." If you seem some particularly arcane rule, it's almost certain that some guy at the operator thought it was a good idea and it was now codified by having been "approved" by the insurer and the insurer take the heat for it.
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Yep. Still mostly true for club and FBO policies.
 
Salty said:
But it's ok for the student to fly 50 miles away and taxi at an airport without the CFI present? That doesn't sound like "direct" supervision to me.

Makes no sense.
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Skip Miller said:
Which means for the belt and suspenders approach, get your CFI to give you a taxi lesson (he does that every time you fly, from exiting the runway to the tie down - doesnt he?) and then put a short endorsement in your logbook: "I have given Mr X taxi lessons in this aircraft on the grounds of Kyyy and he is competent to reposition this aircraft on this airport solo, for the purpose of refueling and returning to the tie down. Signed xxx CFI ######". That should keep everyone happy.

-Skip
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A CFI can't 'make up' endorsements. they're defined in AC 61-65.
 
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